What does this leader need to stop start and or continue doing

Over the years, I’ve amassed a fair amount of information about what managers need to start and stop doing in order to be at their best as leaders. This information has been gathered through conversations (interviews) with bosses, peers, and direct reports of the managers both at the beginning of a coaching engagement and toward the end (to measure progress).

This information can be consolidated into general “themes” which might say a lot about what stakeholders want from managers. These themes are prevalent with managers in small and large companies of all kinds, and at all levels within those companies:

1. Stop doing work others should do and start letting them do it: Most managers I’ve worked with have room to do more delegating. Their employees get frustrated because they are fully capable of doing the work the manager is doing. When the manager and I talk about their need to delegate, I often hear that they fear cutting the chord, believing that things won’t be done “right” (translation: things won’t be done their way). This is about control, which only serves the manager and not the organization.

My thoughts: If you’re not delegating enough, you aren’t realizing the wealth of untapped potential in your employees who are anxious to be autonomous and be challenged! If it’s true that if you believe your employees aren’t capable of doing the work they are meant to do, then you should fire them and start over with employees you can believe in. By the way, if you haven’t noticed yet, you’re burning yourself out while doing too much!

2. Stop ignoring key relationships and start nurturing them: Almost all managers need to set a priority to develop important relationships with stakeholders who will help them and their organization to become successful and sustainable. When smart managers and I talk about this, they often say they don’t have time to work on relationships at work. There is no leadership without relating to others so put relationships at the top of your priority list.

My thoughts: The chances that you’ll fail because you’re too smart are small. But the chances you’ll be successful by nurturing key relationships is great. Your brain-smarts will only go so far in an organization. As you work your way up the leadership ladder, it’s absolutely essential to make sure that you develop and nurture key relationships. Many leaders find that it works to identify their important stakeholders and schedule regular meetings with them.

3. Stop talking so much and start listening more: Over-talking and failing to listen to others might appear to be a very minor indiscretion on the part of a manager. In the end, failing to listen to others and really hear them results in problems all the way from strained relationships to ethical breaches to failure of an important initiative. All this can happen because a manager feels like they have to be heard but are unwilling to listen to others.

My thoughts: The kind of listening that you need to cultivate requires you to be fully present, to shut off the judging chatter and waiting for your turn to speak. This is the kind of deep listening where you stop talking and open your ears AND your heart to hear others in a way that promotes understanding and learning. It’s harder and more important than you might think.

4. Stop being tactical and start broadening your scope. When you’re in a position that requires you to become more visionary, staying tactical bore your manager, employees, and others who have your career in their hands. It will keep your organization from being everything it can be. When you broaden your sights, your organization can exceed its goals and expectations (and you just might be seen as promotable).

My thoughts: You can’t fully lead until you’ve mastered this, and it is often aligned with #1 above. When you stop doing the tactical day to day work and allow your team to step up, you leave room in your brain to think bigger, more strategically, and to develop and realize a vision.

If you’re pondering what your developmental opportunities for the year might be, take a look at these four things, find one that resonates with you, set some goals, and take action.

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Mary Jo Asmus is an executive/leadership coach whose work spans decades of making a difference in the lives of hundreds of executives, leaders and teams in Fortune 500, mid- and small- sized business, governments and nonprofits. She focuses on facilitating individuals and teams from first-line supervisor to the C-suite to create, develop, and influence the relationships that can make them extraordinary.

Start, stop continue is as simple as it is adaptable, and a great exercise for leaders to use in meetings to help gather useful feedback from teams. It’s a great leadership tool too, as it helps to get buy in, and show you’re listening to your teams. 

Here’s how start, stop, continue works:

I’ve used versions of this exercise over the years, and find it works best face-to-face. 

Talk to your team about the topic you want feedback on, and explain that you want them to provide feedback in three sections: 

Stop: Things that they think are less effective and which they think should be stopped.

Start: Things which aren’t currently being done but that they believe hold value and would be good to start doing.

Continue: Things that are going well and which should be continued.

When is start, stop, continue useful? 

• Start, stop, continue is useful for lots of situations, but specifically:
• When you are at critical crossroads
• If you are new manager – using start, stop, continue helps gain credibility and input and shows your team you want to include them in decisions
• If you want to make feedback actionable – for example you may have results from a companywide survey but need a way to make the feedback actionable
• If you’ve gone through large transition –  4-6 months after a transition is a good time to use start, stop, continue to get feedback. This length of time is good because your team will be able to compare and contrast the past with how they want the future to look – for example post Covid you might want to get feedback on working from anywhere practices. 

Doing start, stop, continue, virtually

If you need to use Zoom, then split your team into no more than five people (anymore and those who are less comfortable are unlikely to contribute). Again discuss the topic in question and then use the Zoom breakout rooms for different teams. Then have them come back and present their feedback to the full group. 

Actioning feedback

Once you have the feedback you can incorporate it in two ways: 

1. Decide as a team during the meeting action points from the feedback – be clear on what is congruent and what is not. Decide which things you will start, stop and continue with and make sure those responsible know what they need to do following the meeting
2. Take the feedback away and present back once you have had a chance to create a more detailed action plan. Again, be sure to show you have listened and taken note of your team’s feedback.  

It really is a very simple and effective feedback tool for teams. 

Hope this is helpful. if you enjoy #leadership articles and insight into leading people then do hit the subscribe button at the top of this article and you'll be notified when I post a new article.

Andy. 

Start, Stop, Continue is a simple feedback tool that can help you continually improve over time that works at both an individual and team level.

Many people struggle to both give and receive constructive feedback. Why? Because feedback can be uncomfortable. It can be uncomfortable to challenge your team’s performance, and it can be equally as uncomfortable to receive challenging feedback on your performance.

Because feedback can be uncomfortable, many managers put off giving frank feedback. They know that feedback can improve their team’s performance, but fear that if taken the wrong way, triggering a fight or flight response, it will have the opposite effect and reduce performance.

Wouldn’t it be great if there was a simple tool you could use to overcome these challenges and, as a result, make your team more productive and increase collaboration? Well, Start, Stop, Continue might be just the tool for you.

What is Start, Stop, Continue?

Start, Stop, Continue is a simple exercise, taking less than twenty minutes, that generates three lists.

1. Start List: Ideas that you don’t currently do but that would be good to start doing.
2. Stop List: Things you’re currently doing but should stop doing because they’re not adding any value.
3. Continue List: Things that have been working well and should be adopted as part of your team’s core activities.

Let’s jump in and look at each category in a little more detail.

1. Start

Your start list contains fresh ideas that you’d like to start doing. These actions should focus on:

• Improving existing processes.
• Creating a new process.
• Reducing waste.
• Improving the quality of what you produce.
• Positively impacting how your team feels.
• Improving how your team collaborates.

Remember to include not just technical actions but also behavioral actions.

Questions you can think about to trigger ideas include:

• “If you had a new person join the team, what would you have them work on?”
• “If money was no object, where would invest?”

Ultimately, you want your start list to be a set of fresh ideas to consider trying.

2. Stop

Your stop list contains actions you’re currently doing that need to stop. Stopping these activities will free your team up to do more constructive activities. Actions that need to stop are those that:

• Consume time with little reward.
• Distract you from your core purpose.
• Are inefficient.
• Negatively impact how your team feels.
• Are outside of your core competencies.

Remember to include not just technical actions but also behavioral actions.

Questions to think about to trigger ideas include:

• “What activities do you constantly put off? Why do you never get to these activities?”
• “What activities do you think could be eliminated from your working day?”
• “Is there some activity you do that you think is a waste of time?”

Clearing out the deadwood activities can be like a breath of fresh air for your team. Your team will feel more productive and feel like there is more purpose to their work.

3. Continue

Activities to continue are those that are working well but not yet part of your standard practice. 

Commonly, these activities will have been introduced in the previous iteration of the Start, Stop, Continue loop and are working well, but you have not yet embedded them into standard practice.

Questions that can help trigger ideas include:

• “Where are we adding the most value?”
• “Are there activities or behaviors that promote our values or culture?”
• “What activities do you find most fulfilling?”

How to Perform a Start, Stop, Continue Session

To perform a Start, Stop, Continue workshop with your team, simply follow the steps below, acting as the meeting facilitator.

1. On a wall or large whiteboard, create three columns and label them ‘Start,’ ‘Stop, and ‘Continue.’
2. Ask each person to spend a minute writing their answers on sticky notes in an actionable way to: “what should we start doing?”.
3. Do this again for the ‘Stop’ and ‘Continue’ columns.
4. Ask each team member in turn, to post their sticky notes on to the three columns, explaining each one as they do so. Group related stickies into themes as you go. Discard any that aren’t in scope. It can be helpful if you, as the facilitator, go first to model how this should be done to your team.
5. Allocate each team member three votes to distribute to the actions they’d like to see implemented. They are free to spend their votes as they choose; they could spend all three votes on one sticky or distribute them across three stickies. Note that you don’t have to have three votes. You can have as many as you like; just make sure that each team member has the same number of votes.
6. The output from the previous step will be a prioritized list of what your team should start, stop, and continue doing.
7. Before wrapping up the session, ensure that each action has an owner and a deadline so they get done in a timely fashion. Finally, email the agreed actions to all your team members.

The model works best when you repeat it at regular intervals, for example, every week or month. That way, you continuously improve over time.

When you hold these meetings regularly, they should take less than 20 minutes to complete.

Start, Stop, Continue Examples

There are many ways you can use Start, Stop, Continue. We’ll look at three:

1. An agile retrospective.
2. Achieving a personal goal.
3. Creating a great working environment.

1. An Agile Retrospective

Start, Stop, Continue is often used in agile retrospectives, which are regular postmortems held by agile teams to reflect on what worked, what didn’t, and why. They are usually held at the end of each agile sprint or cycle.

The output from an agile retrospective for a single sprint might look like this.

Start:

• Using XYZ software to test all code.
• Ensure all code is checked in at the end of the day.

Stop:

• Starting the daily standup meetings late.

Continue:

2. Achieving a Personal Goal

Imagine that you want to lose weight gradually over time in a healthy way. Rather than go on a crash diet, you decide to use the Start, Stop, Continue model each week to help you make regular improvements to your food and exercise choices over time.

The output from a single week’s Start, Stop, Continue session might look like this.

Start:

• Exercising before work.
• Having healthy breakfasts on weekends.

Stop:

• Throwing your diet out the window when the weekend arrives.

Continue:

• Bringing a homemade lunch to the office.

3. Creating a Great Working Environment

Imagine you are managing a team and you want to create the best office working experience for your team in the city. You use Start, Stop, Continue with your team monthly to improve their office experience.

The output from a single months’ Start, Stop, Continue session might look like this.

Start:

• Get showers installed for employees to use.

Stop:

• Supplying the free but unhealthy food that appears in the office every Friday.
• Allowing the coffee machine to run out of coffee.

Continue:

Start, Stop, Continue Template

If you’d like to perform your own Start, Stop, Continue exercise, you can download our Start, Stop, Continue Template here.

Advantages and Disadvantages

There are several advantages and disadvantages associated with Start, Stop, Continue.

Advantages

• It gives everyone in the team the same opportunity to provide feedback.
• The feedback is action-oriented, allowing you to use it to improve immediately.
• Over time the model can improve quality, reduce waste, and increase employee retention.

Disadvantages

• The model is inward-looking and doesn’t prompt you to consider wider issues, such as what industry trends are emerging or what other teams outside your organization are doing.
• The model doesn’t provide techniques to generate new ideas to add to each column.

Summary

Start, Stop, Continue is a simple feedback tool that can help you continually improve over time that works at both an individual and team level.

Although the tool is straightforward, it can lead to meaningful improvement over the long term.